The autumn rain tapped against the window of the duty room in a steady rhythm. The monotonous sound was almost like a lullaby, as if someone were slowly drumming on time itself. Mihail and I stood beside the door, listening to the chief physician’s final briefing.
— Well, colleagues — Lev Borisovich adjusted his thin-framed glasses while looking us over with the gaze of a man whose thirty years of psychiatric experience showed in every movement.
— You will spend a month and a half here. Your task is not simply to tick boxes in your practice journals. You must learn to observe. Psychiatry is not only about medication and case files.
Psychiatry means that a person is able to hear the silence.
I looked at Mihail, and he looked back at me. The sentence sounded far too dramatic coming from someone who only minutes earlier had been explaining the rules for filling out outpatient records.
— Come, I will show you our so-called golden cage — the chief physician finally said with a half smile.
The corridor was long and narrow. It gave the impression of the deck of a motionless ship: doors lined one side, each hiding its own separate world. We stopped at the last door.
Lev Borisovich took out a key, unlocked the door, then stepped aside so we could go in first.
The room was small. Almost embarrassingly small. A bed, a small bedside table, a chair by the window… and a painting.
The painting hung on the wall opposite the chair, as if it had been deliberately nailed there with thick, rusty nails.
It was an oil landscape: a massive oak tree stood on a hill, its crown wide and heavy, its roots seeming to dig deep into the earth. From one thick branch a swing hung — a simple wooden board attached with two ropes.
From the tree a narrow path began, winding between the hills before disappearing into a darkening forest on the horizon. The sky in the distance glowed with reddish light, as if the final flames of sunset were burning there.
A woman sat on the chair with her back to us.
Motionless.
It was difficult to tell her age. She could have been forty, but she might just as easily have been sixty.
The illness had erased the years from her face, leaving only a smooth, tired mask. Her dark hair was loosely tied up, her shoulders slightly slumped, her hands resting quietly in her lap.
— Elena Vereszova — the chief physician said softly. — She has been with us for eleven years and three months.
The woman did not turn around. She looked at the painting as if nothing else in the world existed beyond it.
The chief physician gestured for us to step a little closer to the door.
— Her case is both ordinary and unique — he continued.
— Eight years ago she lost her husband and her seven-year-old son. A car accident. She was driving. She survived by a miracle. She was in a coma for three weeks. Then rehabilitation. Outwardly, a full recovery.
— Then what makes it unique? — Mihail asked, who had the habit of asking questions at the worst possible moment.
— Wait — the chief physician said calmly. — Half a year after leaving the hospital, Elena began behaving strangely. Her only relative, her cousin, noticed it.
She said Elena talked to someone in the apartment. She laughed. She cried. She asked questions. When she asked who Elena was talking to, Elena calmly replied that she was speaking with her husband and her son.
— And where are they? — I asked.
The chief physician pointed at the painting.
— She said they come from there.
Naturally, the cousin tried to remove the painting.
She thought that if the stimulus disappeared, the hallucinations would disappear too. But Elena had such a violent outburst that an ambulance had to be called. That was how she was admitted here for the first time.
Since then the painting has followed her everywhere. Whenever we took it away, she panicked. If we hid it, she found it. Once she even broke a window to get it back.
— Why is she in a separate room? — I asked.
— Because when she speaks with them, the other patients react. Crying, panic, seizures. We cannot explain it. Perhaps tension spreads among them. This way everyone is calmer.
— And the treatments? — Mihail asked.
— We tried everything. Medication, therapy, hypnosis. She is calm, cooperative… but every full moon she sits in front of the painting and waits.
— For what?
— She says that is when they come.
The chief physician gestured that we should leave.
Just before stepping out, I instinctively looked back.
Elena Vereszova slowly turned her head and looked straight at me.
Her gaze was clear. Calm. There was no madness in it. Only a faint smile. Then she turned back to the painting. A chill ran down my spine.
The following days passed quickly. We took notes, helped the staff, and learned the routine. The smell of disinfectant constantly floated through the corridors.
On the fourth day Lev Borisovich announced that each of us had to choose a patient for special observation. Mihail chose an elderly man with paranoia.
I chose Elena Vereszova.
— Are you sure? — the chief physician asked.
— Yes.
I began my observation in an unusual way. I asked nothing. I simply brought another chair, sat beside her, and looked at the painting. She did not react.
The next day the same. The third day as well. After a week I knew the painting by heart. I counted the leaves on the lower branch. I noticed exactly where the path disappeared into the forest.
On the tenth day Elena spoke.
— Do you know why the swing is empty?
I was surprised.
— Why?
— Because it waits. A swing cannot move by itself. Someone must sit on it. My boys are waiting too.
— Will you tell me about them?
Elena looked at me.
— Viktor was tall. He had strong hands. He was an engineer, but at home he was always building something. Andruska was just like him. He always lost his socks. Every morning we searched the whole apartment for a single sock.
She smiled.
— On the day of the accident our son sat in the back seat drawing. Viktor was talking about a new greenhouse he wanted to build in the garden. Then a truck came from the opposite direction.
She fell silent.
— When I woke up in the hospital they told me they were dead.
— And when they come? — I asked.
— They talk. Viktor tells me what it is like there. Andruska shows me his drawings.
— Where is that place?
Elena pointed at the painting.
— There. Beyond the forest.
— When do they come?
— On the full moon.
— And next time?
— On the third moon.
Her voice was far too calm. That night the moon was full. Cold light streamed through the hospital windows into the corridors. After midnight I left my room.
Elena’s door was slightly open. I heard voices inside.
— Andruska, don’t move so much… let me look at you…
I stepped inside. The painting… was alive. A little boy sat on the swing. A man stood on the path. The boy looked at me.
— Who is he, mom?
Elena answered.
— The doctor.
The man spoke.
— He should leave. It is not his time yet.
I stepped back. I almost ran into the corridor. In the morning I searched for her medical file. I found a photograph in it. Elena, Viktor and Andruska stood in it.
The exact same faces. Two weeks later the practice ended. When I said goodbye, Elena took my hand.
— You saw them, didn’t you?
I could not lie.
— Yes.
— There is no need to be afraid. We are only waiting for each other.
A month later I returned to the hospital. I asked another student.
— What happened to Vereszova?
— She died. On the night of the full moon. They found her smiling.
I went down to the basement. The painting was there. The boy on the swing. The man on the path. And Elena beneath the tree. A family. Together. Forever. Many years have passed since then.
I became a doctor. But every year at the end of October I return there. I sit in front of the painting. And I listen to the silence. Sometimes it seems that the boy waves. The man nods.
The woman smiles. And I know that what I saw was real. Because sometimes madness is just another name for truth. And love… is stronger even than death.
